Tolls on turnpikes, bridges, and other toll facilities are increasingly collected through the use of electronic toll collection devices. The use of such devices to pay tolls is both faster and more convenient than paying in cash or tokens.
Such a device typically takes the form of a transponder that is attached to the inside of the windshield of a vehicle. The transponder stores a number identifying a user's account. At a suitably equipped tool booth, the transponder is read to determine the account number, and the user's account is debited by the amount due for the toll. The user must from time to time add money to the account. An example of such a toll or payment collection system is E-ZPass™, used in states from Massachusetts to West Virginia. Examples of conventional electronic toll or payment collection systems include U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,955,970 to Ando et al., 5,809,480 to Chasek, 5,450,359 to Sharma et al., 5,424,727 to Shieh, 5,374,930 to Schuermann, and 5,287,112 to Schuermann, the subject matter of each of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
In the state of the art, large customer-service centers are staffed to open and maintain accounts, manage transponder inventories and distribution, and provide responses to customer complaints. To obtain a transponder, a potential user must either visit one of a limited number of such customer-service centers, which may be in an inconvenient or even unsafe location and may have limited hours of operation, or order a transponder through the mail or over the Internet and then wait for it to arrive. Even users who already have transponders often have to visit customer-service centers to replenish or otherwise manage their accounts. In addition to the inconvenience to the user, such an arrangement imposes a cost on the toll authority, which must hire enough staff to serve all potential customers.
Furthermore, current operations are not convenient for cash-paying customers. Many potential users must pay cash because they do not have credit cards or even bank accounts. Others desire the anonymity and privacy provided by cash. As a result, toll authorities are limited in their ability to move to electronic toll or payment collection, as they cannot readily accommodate users paying in cash.
Another issue is the desire to implement “open road tolling systems,” which are systems that collect tolls only automatically, without manual intervention. Toll agencies need to collect tolls from frequent users, but also desire to provide access to occasional and transitional users such as tourists or seasonal residents. The cost, time and inconvenience associated traditional tag distribution and account set up typically mean that agencies need to maintain a large number of lanes for cash collection of individual transactions to accomplish this. Alternatively, some roads in recent years (for example, Highway 407 in Toronto) have moved to all-electronic collection that uses a combination of RF tags and “pay by plate.” In “pay by plate” the agency deploys a system to capture the license plate image in lieu of the transponder. It then accesses the DMV database to obtain the vehicle owner's information and bills the vehicle owner for the transaction. This typically requires special legislation and is very expensive process to administer, driving up the cost of toll or payment collection. Further, video capture and license plate reading (combining automated and manual processes) is inherently less accurate than the RF ID based tag systems, resulting in potential lost revenue to the toll authority.